"Amoeba has so much more vinyl and is a much more happening store to forget about life worries ... it's therapy for me. Amoeba has always been THE BEST!" So recently wrote Amoeba fan "Lovedrop Says" in a posting on the NBC website as part of a poll amongst Bay Area residents intended to decipher which is a better store, Rasputin or Amoeba.

By end of the voting Amoeba had beaten out Rasputin with 68% to their 32% of votes by Bay Area NBC website visitors. The poll was actually about the Berkeley Amoeba but what Lovedrop Says about the Telegraph Ave. Amoeba is equally true of the Haight Street Amoeba, as reaffirmed about a week or so ago when I stopped by the San Francisco Amoeba Music store for some therapy myself.

Besides that feeling of "therapy" described by Lovedrop Says -- when you get so lost in the rows and rows of vinyl and CDs that time just magically slips away and what seems like ten minutes can be two hours -- there are many other reasons to love visiting the Amoeba Music San Francisco store. I made a list of ten of the top reasons to shop Amoeba right here, including what Lovedrop Says wrote about Amoeba as therapy -- reason #1.

As an art lover, especially graffiti, I have almost as much fun outside Amoeba SF gazing at the walls of colorful art on the store's outer walls (reason #2) including the image above (minus the photoshopped in Tony BennettI Left My Heart in San Francisco LP -- that record can found inside in the used LPs section). So impressive are the colorful outer walls of Amoeba SF that they have been used in many photo and video shoots including in Bored Stiff's most recent video "@ A Distance." There is also lots of other graf art on walls nearby all within a block of Amoeba SF. It is like a free outdoor art gallery. Well wicked!

"Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life," claims the heading on Facebook once you arrive on their website. But we all know, or should suspect, that the phenomenally popular social networking site (175 million + members worldwide) would love to share your information with more than just "the people in your life" (i.e., advertisers or anyone willing to pay), especially when increased revenues for the company are at stake.

Hence the news this week that, following a tidal wave of protests from its justifiably anxious users that Facebook (FB) would again modify its rules by withdrawing recent changes to its so-called "terms of service" (TOS) dealing with the data (personal information, wall postings, messages, images etc.) supplied by its legions of devoted members, should not come as a big surprise.

The new message posted on FB reads, "Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised." That recent adjustment to the Facebook/member contract occurred about two weeks ago when the site deleted a provision from its TOS: an important one that said users could remove their FB data anytime they wished, and once they deleted it, that the license would expire. Suddenly FB added new data stating that FB could and would retain users’ content and licenses even after a user's FB account was terminated. Understandably this was perceived as meaning that FB forever owns everything you post on their site and naturally this unnerving bit of news set off a domino effect of paranoia amongst its members.
Hence the back-peddling by FB top dog Mark Zuckerberg, who assured members in a blog posted two days ago that the fact that “people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant.” This is the guy, you will recall, who forked over a whopping $65 million settlement in a lawsuit by his three old Harvard buddies who said they came up with the idea first -- intended for their own site, ConnectU -- and that that Zuckerberg (whose net worth is guestimated to be $1.5 billion) simply stole it from them. The case got settled before going to court so we really don't know the real dealio and it is possible that Zuckerberg is innocent, but I sure doubt it. This is the guy who millions are entrusting with their most personal information!

Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

Sometimes when artists license their music for use in a TV commercial you feel compelled to cringe, oft feeling like they have somehow betrayed you (the dedicated music fan) by selling out and discrediting all the sincere association you once had with said song. But then in other instances the use seems perfectly fitting. Such is the case with the early 80's use of the great ska/pop song "Baggy Trousers" by the ever-distinctly British band Madness in a UK TV commercial for Colgate's (then new)Blue Minty Gel line of toothpaste.

The song is taken from the 2Tone band's 1980 album Absolutely and was written by lead singer Suggs (born Graham McPherson). Its lyrics reminisce about school days and the song's accompanying music video was partly shot in a boys school, hence the use of the song in the TV spot featuring school boys (who do a fun spot-on imitiation of Madness) seems most appropriate, with their re-appropriation of the lyrics into a ditty promoting dental hygiene coming across as clever, not crass.

Above is the UK television Colgate spot and below is the Madness video for the original song, released as a single in September 1980, which peaked at number 3 in the UK singles chart that year. Note that the song was also featured in the 2001 film soundtrack to Mean Machine and was additionally used continually throughout the play The History Boys. Reportedly the inside joke is that baggy trousers are one of the initial signs of madness.

Rickey Vincent literally wrote the book on funk. The college professor, writer, and radio DJ, who resides in Berkeley CA with his wife and two sons, is the author of the acclaimed music history book Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of The One (St. Martin's Press) which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. If you don't already have this book, with a forward by George Clinton, I highly recommended it since it is the most comprehensive study on funk.

In addition to being an author & journalist, Vincent has taught at City College of San Francisco and SF State University where he taught a course entitled Protest Music Since 1965: Funk, Rap and the Black Revolution. Rickey is also a longtime Bay Area radio DJ at stations KALX and KPFA, where he still hosts his popular weekly funk show The History of Funk, Fridays at 10PM on 94.1FM.

The widely respected funkateer's musical knowledge (and music collection) is unmatched. I recently caught up with Vincent to talk about the funk/hip-hop connection and the impact of funk and black music in general on both American and global cultures, among other things. The conversation inevitably turned to godfather of soul / funk pioneer James Brown a few times during the interview.

Vincent is currently finishing up last minute details on his next book Party Music -- a fascinating historical account of the Black Panther Party's own funk band, Oakland's The Lumpen, who took popular funk songs and rhythms but substituted more revolutionary lyrics. (Look for a future interview with him about this upon its publication.) For more information on the author, you can visit Rickey Vincent's website or his MySpace. You can also read his book or check out his show on KPFA.